Dossier Finished!

Our dossier is finished. Dave had his dr. appt on Friday and was able to get the letter by the afternoon and I raced down to get it certified and made it just in time. Today I will be copying all of the last documents and then Fed Ex'ing them to our agency for review. Hopefully we will receive our pre-approval from Dept of Homeland Security this week as well. This will be our very last doc for the dossier. Luckily I don't have to have it certified. I can simply scan and e-mail it! Wouldn't it be such a blessing if it arrived today? After we get that, our agency will send it to the Vietnamese Consolate office in San Francisco for approval and then off to Vietnam for translation and more approval. We are getting closer.

Now that our part is completely finished with the dossier, it is on to moving documents. We all have to have physicals and signed letters for the Dr to receive Dave's official orders. Can you believe it? Have I not been to the Dr enough and had enough signatures that my health is fine? Luckily for Dave because he couldn't get in any sooner than yesterday he was able to knock out both forms in one visit. I however will be taking the kids in to the Dr. on spring break for signatures. Hopefully not more immunizations. We also have to make appointments with the mental health office to make sure that we are stable enough to move overseas. I don't mind, but man are there a lot of hoops to continue to jump!

Pair-o-Dice

Dave is excited to be moving to Guam. His last Island assignment was Iceland. We are looking forward to warmer island weather with ocean breezes above freezing! We are also looking forward to hops and exploring the far East. Travel plans include: Vietnam, Australia, Hawaii, Japan and Korea. Other activities that we plan to try: Marlin fishing, Scuba, and touring WWII battlefields (At least Dave plans to ;). The girls have plans to spend a lot of time on the beach.

We Have ORDERS!!!!!!

Dave's supervisor and Wing Chaplain stopped by this afternoon. It is odd that they would come to the house. I wasn't sure what was up. She handed Dave a paper and let him know that he is assigned to Guam, Andersen AFB!!!! This was our first pick! What an exciting announcement. We are to report no later than July 31. We will be leaving here at the end of June for first part of July.

Dossier Off!

I have spent several hours today certifying documents and copying them three times, separating and organziing the papers. I have Fed Ex'd three sets to Holt. I have a few more documents that I am waiting on, but have the bulk of the requirements finished! What a relief. The few things I am waiting on I cannot speed up. I'll just wait and be patient. I expect it to be completely finished by March 15.

3 Certified!

I finally found the Secretary of State office and they were VERY helpful. I have three documents completely certified and will be making lots of copies and mailing what I have now. I'm not as far into the process as I would like, but slowly progressing.

Agh!

I have been working on our dossier this week. It seems like everything is taking 5 times longer than it should. I have three documents county certified, and none are state certified yet. I'm a little frustrated. I spent all morning getting paperwork done. At 1:45 I was arriving at the gate to pick up the girls (they get out at 1:40 on Thursdays) and I couldn't find my ID....Dave is TDY. I almost hit my limit. I held myself together, but was about to burst into tears. I am really sick of red tape. The guy at the gate knew me....he sees me all the time, but still made me wait until I found it. Are you kidding me? Like a notorized document isn't enough for the Vietnamese government. I have to have them county and state certified too. I'm fed up today. Give me a nap and I'll be better tomorrow :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Wow! Where has the week gone? I haven't had one fly by so fast in many months! I am having the week of my life. I am getting caught up on work here at home and loving every minute of it.

Today I had my Dr's appointment, and the girls' appointments too. Tonight I am fasting for bloodwork tomorrow morning along with the not so nice radiology appointment tomorrow afternoon. I figured I should get everything out of the way as quick as possible. I should have the Dr's letter as soon as the bloodwork comes back. However, I wasn't able to get Dave's appointment as quickly.

Dave has a new toy. The girls in the house like to refer to it as his "mid-life crisis" He has a new Les Paul Electric Guitar. I don't know the details. Dave will have to elaborate on it. I'll post a picture in a few days. Miranda got some panda bears (surprise) and McKenzie a new WebKinz. I got a new monkey for our little guy's room and a new shirt.

Moving on....

When I was deciding whether to stay home or try to continue my job, I wrote some goals for staying home. I'll share:

Written Goals for Val Staying Home
Give myself one day a week off
Bible Study daily
Exercise daily
Run a 5k before we move
Stick to Weight Watchers daily and lose to before kids weight again
Check bank account balance daily
Stick to FlyLady and organize/purge each room before we move
Cook dinner every night
Make lunches for the girls daily
Dishes always done
Laundry always done
House always picked up
Scrapbook a minimum of 3 hrs a week

The first week I will be playing catch up :) I finished my last day of work. It is a big change for me mentally. I feel a little lost. I figure I will have a lot of sleep to catch up on as well. I fell asleep around 6 last night! I'll get back into the routine of being a stay at home mom in no time. I already have doctor appointments for each of us girls next week, a school board meeting, a reinlistment ceremony, school conference, talent show rehersals for the girls and a spiritual retreat for me planned for next week.

The first thing I did after I had lunch with my coworkers is go get a deep chemical peel. I need to get some of the stress off of my face. I am hoping this will help my skin a lot. I've always had problems, but I needed to make this a priority for myself. I put it off because it involves a few days of peeling and I didn't want to look crazy at work. So, I'll look crazy for all of these other appointments :) Right now I look just wind burnt.

We have more great news! Now that our fingerprints are in, we are moving on to our Dossier. It consists of our certified paperwork being sent to Vietnam. I'm not sure how each of the agencies do this, or what is normal. What I do know is that our agency told us to start. I just follow what they say and so now that I am home, I will be compiling more loads of paperwork. I haven't really even looked at the packet yet. I didn't want to overwhelm myself too early! I figured making my doctor's appointment was a good start.

Fingerprint Appointment!

I forgot to post last week with all of the happenings at work. We received our appointment for fingerprints with the Homeland Security Department. We are one step closer! The appointment is next week. Not real great timing for us considering it is my last week of work and I have all the time in the world to do it the next week and Dave had to pass on a great out of town assignment (those don't come around all that much). I do look forward to a stop at the Cheesecake Factory while we are in Birmingham :)

Little Girl Scream Fest 2008!

I took the girls to the Hannah Montana Movie "Concert." It was good.....the girls loved it. I was sitting there in the midst of a sea of little girls and the thought of my brother saying "This is a little girl scream fest." This is exactly what it was. I could hardly hear Miley for all of the screaming. I need to pat myself on the back tonight for being a cool mom. I was even asked to sit at the same table for dinner at the mall!

Atlanta

We went to the new Coke World! Don't worry Brian, it isn't dramatically better than the previous one. We did pick you up a little gift.

Here are our hosts for the weekend, D,Q & L

I loved watching little L...however she didn't warm up to us very well. Maybe next time we see her :)

It's a Coke couch and rug! Miranda wanted this just for Uncle Brian.

L did warm up to Miranda. Miranda loved holding her hand and walking with her. There were several times that we needed translation. I couldn't tell if she was babbling or speaking Vietnamese.
I am so proud of us. The girls did excellent with the food. We were served a fish (with the head on) and they didn't even flinch. The fish was very good, however I didn't get near the head! We went with some new Vietnamese friends that Dave met at a birthday party the weekend before. We ate Vietnamese food all weekend. It was a wonderful experience for me. I know I won't starve when we go pick up our son!

Snow in the SOUTH!!!!

The girls have been praying for snow for 4 years!!! We didn't get much in Oregon and I knew there would never be a chance they would get it here. I guess I was wrong. They lucked out because we were headed to Atlanta last weekend and they received more snow that Montgomery. I was delighted to let them play. I haven't seen them have so much fun in a long time!

Bob Cat

My brother sent this photo to me yesterday. I was excited for him. I did a little photo editing to make it family friendly :)

Ultrasound

The Girls were complaining that we couldn't have ultrasounds of their little brother like other babies. We saw this idea on an Adoption Website and decided to make an "Ultrasound" of our own. If you look closely-the Baby is actually the outline of Vietnam.--Dave

Happy New Year!

I am delighted to see a New Year arrive! The things we are looking forward to this year: traveling in conjunction with a move, me quitting my job, hopefully get a referral for our son!



We went out to some Geo Cache sights yesterday with Dave's GPS. I think we will go hang out today too. McKenzie has shingles again and needs to be quarantined. So, we are doing things that are close to home. Here are few pics from yesterday.